


An Offer You Can't Refuse

by ignipes



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-12
Updated: 2006-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred, George, the magical joke shop mafia, a cunning business plan, and one ill-fated rubber chicken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Offer You Can't Refuse

The first sign of trouble was the rubber chicken on the doorstep.

George picked it up gingerly and examined it in the morning sunlight. "I hope it didn't suffer too much," he said, shaking his head solemnly.

Flicking his wand to unlock the door, Fred agreed. "You never know what they'll do to innocent bystanders."

-

Next they found six decapitated Putrescent Parrots hanging in the front window.

George said, "I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now."

"Six, actually," Fred corrected him. "This is terrible. I thought that order was for a birthday party."

They took the Putrescent Parrots down and returned them to the shelves. After all, the merchandise was still usable.

-

It was the jar of Ogling Eyes that made them worry.

George began, "Do you think we should--"

Fred interrupted quickly, "No. Absolutely not." He tilted the jar; the eyes sloshed and rolled in the slimy green liquid. "That's not how these things work."

"So what do we do?"

Fred flipped the sign on the door to _Open_ and said, "We wait."

-

Exactly one week after the incident of the rubber chicken, the article was on the front page of the _Prophet_.

"'Mr. Zebediah Zonko,'" George read, snapping the paper in a manner eerily similar to their father's, "'has announced his plans to reopen his shop in Hogsmeade, five years after he closed the shop without warning and vanished from England.'"

Fred snorted over his inventory sheet. "Turned tail and ran, more like."

"'With Mr. Zonko's return, questions have again been raised about his questionable business practices, including informal accusations of extortion and usury.'"

George lowered the paper, and they both looked at the shelf behind the counter.

"He is also suspected," Fred continued, "in the untimely death of one Mr. Rubber Chicken, found murdered Tuesday last at nine in the morning on Diagon Alley."

George folded the paper and tossed it aside. "Tragedy, that."

-

Ginny came into the shop the next day and asked, "What is that man in the pinstriped robes doing across the street?"

First Fred, then George, crept over to the window and peered out.

Fred watched the man for a moment, then replied, "Putting fireworks under the paving stones."

Ginny shrugged and flopped down in one of the armchairs by the window. The chair farted. "Oh," she said, "that's what I thought."

-

Nobody lost any fingers or toes, but the witch who owned the tea shop across the street complained loudly for several minutes about the lowered standards of the neighbourhood.

-

When Fred woke up and found the floppy remains of a gutted toy Abraxan in his bed, he decided that enough was enough.

"We have to ask around," George said, sipping his tea and yawning.

"There must be some stuff--"

"--still around, even after five years, because--"

"--some of those Zonko's products are impossible to get rid." Fred shoved his chair back and stood up. "Right. This is getting out of hand. It's time we do something."

-

They sent owls. They wrote letters. They begged favours and made requests.

The most help came, surprisingly, from their mother.

"I never throw anything away," she said, bustling into the shop one day with a large box in her hands. "Though for the life of me I can't imagine why you want all this old junk."

"Research," George said.

"Well." She fixed them with a stern gaze, then smiled. "Be good, boys." And bustled out again.

-

The dismembered carcass of a ceramic orang-utan found its way into George's bed the next morning, and they spent the next three nights working.

They melted things. They fused other things together. They found a photograph of Mr. Zebediah Zonko in an old catalogue and memorised his face.

Slowly, the pile of junk -- broken and discarded Zonko's products from ages past, used-up jokes and forgotten toys -- began to take shape as something else.

"Do you think he'll get the message?" George asked one night.

The clock on the wall above the shop door struck midnight and shouted twelve rude insults before falling silent.

"He'll get the message," Fred replied. He held up two scorched dungbombs. "These for the eyes, you think?"

-

They finished their masterpiece in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Monday morning, there was a photograph on the front page of the _Prophet_.

"Brilliant," George breathed, snapping the paper crisply.

"It's a good likeness," Fred agreed.

"Listen: 'Mr. Zebediah Zonko claims to have no knowledge of where the item came from or who is responsible for the prank. When asked whether it may be related to some of his less proper business ventures, Mr. Zonko refused to comment.'"

"It really is a good likeness," Fred said again.

The photograph, in full colour, showed a bewildered Mr. Zonko staring up at a towering construct on his carefully manicured lawn. The statue -- ten feel tall, a mottled mosaic of colour and texture -- stared back at him with dungbomb eyes. It was just like the man was looking at a distorted reflection of himself in a funhouse mirror. Even the cut of the robes was identical, though the statue's were made of old Zonko's catalogue pages rather than silk.

Only the chicken was out of place. The statute had a rubber chicken hanging out of its mouth. Mr. Zonko had no such accessory.

-

Two days later the bell on the door jangled and a shadow fell over the front of the shop.

"Gentleman." He was short and grey-haired and smiled pleasantly. The two hulking men in pinstriped robes behind him did not smile. "It is so nice to meet you at last," he went on. "I am Zebediah Zonko."

Fred and George cross their arms over their chests and waited.

"You have a very interesting shop," Zonko went on, his smile not fading.

Fred waited ten full seconds, watching Mr. Zonko's expression, then said, "Thank you. Please, sit down. What can we do for you?"

"I would like to discuss a business proposition," Mr. Zonko said. "I believe I have an offer that you cannot refuse."

They all pretended not to hear the chair fart as he sat down.


End file.
